Updated March 27th, 2020 at 22:06 IST

Fact check: Does Nagpur have 59 new Coronavirus positive cases including three doctors?

Fact Check: A rumour flying around social media claims that Nagpur has 59 new positive coronavirus patients including three doctors. Is it true or fake?

Fact-Check
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It is very important to have proper news and correct information being passed on in a crucial time like the spread of Coronavirus pandemic. There are many posts all across social media that share information, some of them being true and some of them being false. A recent rumour that is terrorizing many people in Maharashtra is that 59 people in Nagpur have been tested positive for Coronavirus.

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Nagpur's 59 coronavirus cases?

Claim:

A Facebook user shared a post that claimed that 59 people in the city of Nagpur, Maharastra have been tested positive for COVID-19. A similar audio clip is also being shared on social media portals like Whatsapp in which there is a conversation between two people. The audio claims that these 59 people also include Dr Kamlesh Kothari, who is now on a ventilator. Here is an archived version of the Facebook post:

Source: Facebook

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Rating: Fake

According to a report by a leading daily, Nagpur coronavirus cases are just nine. A tweet sent out by the official fact check account set up by the Press Bureau of Information also claims this news to be fake. PIB tweeted that the audio is fake and baseless and also requested people to not spread such rumours.

Source: Twitter

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Origin:

The post that talked about a rumour that 59 people in Nagpur have been tested positive of the Coronavirus was first shared on Twitter and Facebook. The audio clip took its rounds on Whatsapp as well. A report by another leading news portal quoted the Principal Secretary Bhushan Gagrani, who spoke about the audio clip and how it contains false news. He also talked about how he will be handing over the audio to the cyber cell and ask them to investigate the source of the rumour.

Google Trends Analytics of the rumour shows a significant shift in people searching about this rumour. People started searching about it on March 20 and have been doing the same since then. The searches shot up on March 24 midnight and March 25. The constant dip and rise in the statistics show how much the rumour affected people.